Walkthrough overview
'1. Walkthrough overview - Part 1' Hi and welcome to the Tales of Vesperia Walkthrough. Achieving 1,000G in this game will be easy if you follow a guide, but considerably harder and more time consuming if you don't: there is a massive amount of missable collectibles (items, monsters, secondary quests and so on), all related to achievements, and it's often possible to permanently miss some of them if you don't do some actions before proceeding with the story. In this first page I'll try to be of few words, but it's going to be an unusually long introduction because there are many important things to say; check the third part of this page if you only want an overview on the achievements. To complete the game you will need at least two playthroughs: one where you will be working on most of the achievements (ideally, all but two) and all the collectibles, and another on where you will complete the game in a low-level speedrun. In this second playthrough you want to be under level 15 when you clear the first of the three parts of the game (which is actually, in terms of duration, longer than a third of the story), and then you'll want to reach the end of the game within 15 hours. Some people suggest doing two separate playthroughs for these two challenges (each earning you an achievement), but you will see that they actually have a lot in common, and therefore it will be natural to catch these two birds with one stone and save some hours. Unfortunately, because of the very large amount of missables, it's not possible to give you some general quick information on what is missable: such a list would be so long as to coincide with a comprehensive walkthrough anyway. However, among the other ones, there's one missable event which gives acces to a post-game dungeon (the "Labyrinth of Memories"), and since it's quite important, I want to warn you now that you'll have to visit a certain location when a certain dungeon called "Zaude" will raise from the middle of the ocean. The span of time to visit that "certain location" is: as soon as Zaude is available, and before completing the events in Zaude itself. It's a very short window: make sure you don't miss at least that short sub-event, so you can access the Labyrinth of Memories later. Thankfully, since there's a New Game+ feature available (called "EX New Game"), doing secondary playthroughs will be easy. On these secondary playthroughs you'll be able to carry almost everything from the previous runs, and it's even possible to get some special bonuses such as increased drop rate, or increased Exp value earned in battle, and many more features which will make it a breeze to get through the game again. The only problem with secondary playthroughs is that you can't skip the cutscenes (unless it's one of the few "in HQ", which can be skipped by pressing Start), and this adds a lot of hours to each playthrough. You will find more info about these bonuses in the "Post-Game and Other Achievements" page. The walkthrough will be as spoiler-free as possible (in particular, the Story-Walkthrough pages won't contain references to the plots), except for minor references here and there. You can feel "safe" if you follow the Story Walkthrough pages on your first playthrough anyway, but watch out for boss names among the monsters in the Monster List page, and expect story references in the Titles page too. In the General hints and tips page you can find explanations of the terminology used so far. '2. Walkthrough overview - Part 2' The one described so far is the full-immersion approach to the game, written from an "achievement leader" point of view. However, from a "gamer" point of view, allow me to tell you that making three playthroughs on this games can be a much wiser decision, which will make you love this game instead of feeling it like a constant grind of missables, stressed by the need of following a guide all the time. The three playthroughs would be: *First run: explore the game on your own and prepare something for the next playthroughs in the post-game (refer to the post-game section for more information). During this run you will also add most of the monsters to your Monster Book, by using Magic Lenses; if possible, pay a visit to "Kowz" every now and then in a city called "Mantaic", and give him the items he asks; this will pay back when he'll give you a "Blue Dice", which will help farming Grades for the next playthrough. Other than this easy quest which you can do by yourself, you shouldn't worry about anything else *Second run: with the bonuses added by using the Grades when you start this new playthrough, it will be much easier to take care of most of the quests, including some 'hard-work' quests (such as the Labyrinth of Memories, the Coliseum battles, and many more) *Third run: this is the same as the "second run" of the previous approach, so it should include only the two achievements for clearing the first third of the game under level 15 and for clearing the game in under 15 hours Doing this seems to add hours to your completion time - well, it does, but not as many as you may think at first. The only real "wasted" time will be the time it will take you to clear the story events during the second run, which is about 10 hours: speaking of a game which takes the average gamer more than 100 hours to complete, it's not that bad at all when on the other hand you will have a much better time clearing the Secret Missions and secondary events. It may even take you less time to do it with this second approach, thanks to the time saved by leveling up your characters for those "hard-work" quests: we're talking of spending 1 hour of automatized grinding (where you only have to tap A') to get from the minimal possible level to level 150 (with the Exp bonuses of secondary playthroughs) as opposed to hours and hours of grinding to reach level 100 without those bonuses. And believe me, you want to have a high level when you have to defeat 200 enemies in the Coliseum with your party healer alone. In short: I strongly suggest the second approach with three playthroughs. '3. Walkthrough overview - Part 3 For an overview on the achievements, we can group them as follows: *Three story related achievements, worth (in chronological order) 100G, 150G, 200G *Seven "100%" achivements: one is for getting 100% in the game (unlocked automatically after the other ones), one is for revealing 100% of the map (the only non-missable among these seven), another one for saving the game at each of the save points of the game (some are missable); one for completing the Collector's Book (the item list; done by owning each item at least once; some items are missable), another one for completing the Monster's Book (the monster list; done by using a Magic Lens on each of the enemies of the game, in each of their transformations or different forms during the battles - even the same battle; some monsters are missable), and another one for collecting all the Titles of the characters (most of the titles are related to quests, and many are missable); finally, one is for viewing all the "Skits" of the game (sub-events which you can view by pressing Back when they're available; there's a lot of them and some are missable, but it's possible to view them all very easily on a second playthrough, if you decided to get this bonus when you start that playthrough) *Fifteen miscellaneous achievements which require you to synthesize an item; synthesize 20 items (these achievements are a bit buggy; always synthesize one unit of each item you want to synthesize, because if you select more items, then these two achievements may not unlock anymore for your whole playthrough); kill a monster with a Fatal Strike (a special attack introduced later in the game); kill a total of 1,000 enemies (bound to come automatically); kill a Giganto enemy; kill all the 9 Giganto enemies (they're special and particularly powerful opponents, found in specific locations); get 10,000,000 Gald; get 100,000 chips (Gald is the money of the game, while chips are the "money" of a casino area unlocked at the end of the game; obtaining 10,000,000 Gald will be easy, but time consuming, by exploiting the casino itself); complete a quest (the "Bunny Guild" quest) and wear the itmes given as rewards for it for 5 hours (completing the quest requires you to have most of the titles); complete a short quiz quest in Nam Cobanda (available at the end of the game; it's missable, since you have only once chance per playthrough); travel for 100,000 km (doable passively with a rubber band on the Left Stick of the controller, especially when you'll have access to a fast way to fly on the World Map); play for 100 hours total (although the in-game timer doesn't get reset on secondary playthroughs, the "clock for this achievement" is reset; therefore you need 100 hours spent in the current playthrough, and not simply, say, 60 hours on a previous playthrough, and 40 hours on the second playthrough); make a combo of 999 hits (easy and bound to come while grinding other things); clear the Labyrinth of Memories (missable); reach level 200 with every character (not very time consuming on the secondary playthroughs; you can do this in the post-game of your second playthrough, helped by the Exp bonuses) *Twenty-three achievements related to fulfilling special requirements called "Secret Missions" during boss fights. Basically every boss fight has its own Secret Mission, and they are all missable. Some are easier, some are harder. Keep in mind that there's a Title for Yuri which requires you to clear all the Secret Missions in the same playthrough, so please make sure you don't skip any when you decide to go after them *Two achievements for clearing the first third of the game with characters under level 15, and another for clearing the game within 15 hours. Both doable on the same playthrough